


Unum Osculum Ad Tempus

by Zoya1416



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: A lot of age difference, After Broken Homes, Age Difference, Class Difference, Kisses, Language Changing Lives, Latin, M/M, Slow Build, Spoilers for Broken Homes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6056271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I didn't quite slam the doors of the Folly as I left that afternoon, but it was a near thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unum Osculum Ad Tempus

**Author's Note:**

> This started just about Latin and class differences, but then Peter and Nightingale intruded, and firmly insisted it was about other things as well...

I didn't quite slam the doors of the Folly as I left that afternoon, but it was a near thing.  
Me and Nightingale had been very tense after the Skygarden affair and Leslie's treachery. I know he wanted to train me as fast as possible so that I could protect myself more, although how anyone protects himself from being tasered in the back is a mystery. He wanted me to advance in my fighting abilities—I'd been awed earlier in the year when I saw him take apart a building without getting his suit dirty.

Me and Leslie had been awed. I kept thinking of her, even as I tried to label her as the enemy. I knew she'd gone over to the Faceless, I knew she'd broken her oaths, but I would randomly think of something she'd said—some great snarky remark to get me back on track, the firing range practice where she'd gotten me splatted with water or pulverized apple. 

So I knew Nightingale, my mentor, my master in the old, worn-out terminology, wanted to teach me as much as fast as possible, but that afternoon I'd had enough of being patronized.

He said, one time too many, “I can't believe you're not further along with your Latin. I've known the pluperfect tense from the future perfect tense since I was nine years old.”

I thought, but didn't say, “At nine years of age I was helping my mother clean apartments.”

He had paused and was looking disapprovingly at me, and it was just too much.

I rose and said, “Excuse me, sir, but I have to leave. Don't count on me for dinner.”

His face had been disapproving; now it was a shocked mask. I'm not sure what they did to student wizards when they disobeyed, back in the day. It probably involved canes and bare bottoms, or other Edwardian tortures.

I felt off balance as I left the Folly, not sure where I was going. Just out. I had the immediate choice of going to the British Museum which was across the way from us, but I didn't think seeing treasures that British 'explorers' had stolen from their home countries was going to be helpful now.

I could just go to the pub and get drunk; if you're a copper, there's always a solid excuse to get drunk. No one else would understand, though, and that was the downside of working for a division which had had its numbers cut by one-third.

There was someone else, though, if I could stand to go the mortuary. The Iain West Forensic Suite is an extension to the existing Westminster Public Mortuary, and it's an attempt to make forensics look as cool as it does on American television shows. It wasn't a far walk.

Dr. Walid was in, and for once wasn't cutting up creepy corpses and asking me to smell them. He was sitting in his small office, chair turned toward the window, with his eyes closed. I thought at first he was sleeping, then I realized that his lips were moving in a regular pattern. He was praying. I wondered what prayers you use when you've been betrayed by a friend and colleague. I wondered if it was helping him.

I turned to leave. He must have heard me, because he turned back and looked me in the eye.  
“There was nothing you or anyone else could have done.”

I keep wanting to punch people who said that, from Stephanopolous on up.

“I know. I'm escaping from Latin practice.”

He snorted. “Then you're in the wrong place. If medicine doesn't say it in Latin, it says it in Greek, or a bastard mixture of the two.”

“I don't care. _You're_ not making me memorize it.” It came out flatter and harsher than I meant to.

He frowned a bit, not sure where I was going. I wasn't sure either, and probably should just go down to the pub. I wasn't the type of chap who went all emotional about things—I didn't do the stiff upper lip as well as Nightingale, but he'd had about eighty years more to practice.

I hadn't realized I'd said part of that aloud, but Dr. Walid nodded. “Aye. He looks much younger than when I first met him—twenty years ago—and I look much older. I forget he was born in 1900.”

“Before World War I.”

“The big war of his age was the second Boer War.”

I raised my eyebrows. “The Bore War?” 

I'm sure I'd studied it somewhere, but British colonial wars had never interested me.

“Boer. Farmer. They were fought in South Africa between the English colonists who had just arrived, and the Dutch Afrikaners who had been there for three hundred years.”

I continued to keep the eyebrows up. “And the black peoples of South Africa, who'd been there for 100,000 years, give or take a millennium?”

“Were not consulted. The war ended with South Africa in British hands.” 

Abandoning this discussion—I have no time for pointless arguments, even with Scots, whose own war with England had also ended in England's favor.

“Nightingale was born before World War One, before television, the silicon chip, and gastropubs. He probably never ate curries, either.”

Dr. Walid laughed. “No, curry was already here—India, you know.” He explained what kedgeree was, and although I can eat almost anything, the idea of curried rice, boiled eggs, and smoked fish for breakfast put me off.

“It's not just the age in years,” I said, deciding that I might as well talk since I was here.  
“It's—look, you don't have to listen—” he shrugged, and I decided to go for it.

“He's got bespoke suits and shirts, and handmade shoes. I wouldn't wear those kind of shoes anyway, I like my Doc Martens, but that's not the point. I'm from Kentish town, a council estate. When he was nine years old, he knew more Latin than I do now—he pointed that out today. When I was nine—” I broke off, because I wasn't going to tell anyone what I'd thought when I was not quite slamming the door of the Folly.

When I was nine years old, I was learning how to clean offices with my mother. She didn't expect me to vacuum, then. She set me off polishing big, solid pieces of furniture, because it wasn't likely to result in breakage, that and emptying bins. I could sweep and clean mirrors by the time I was ten. Then she taught me how to dust carefully without breaking things. By the time I was twelve, I was handling the big vacuum.

Offices aren't cleaned in the daytime, so we worked after hours and into the evening. I'd get out of school at 3:30, home on the bus about 4. I got to choose between one-half hour of idleness then versus doing my homework after 10 o'clock. About 5, we'd drag the cleaning equipment to her first job, and settle in. Then the next. At some point she would tell me to stop work, and we'd eat what she'd prepared earlier in the day—I got no choice with the two-pot family cooking style, and had her spicy one, unless I'd made sandwiches in my half hour. I could do my homework while she worked. It was normal to get home at ten and go directly to sleep, not watching any TV. Her schedule wasn't any better when she cleaned private homes, although I didn't help her then because that was during school hours. But on school hols I was sorting out lemon polish and cleaning solution for her before she'd go to work. Sometimes she'd let me stay home, sometimes not. 

So not a lot of time for studying bloody Latin.

Was that all of it? just the chasm in classes we faced? Each of us had never expected to have a close contact with the other—black boys his age were strictly laborers, and I had never gotten close to his exalted level. 

It was not. It wasn't only the comparison to his youthful prowess in dead (still dead) languages, it was an implied comparison to the one we'd lost, the one who was so much better a student than I was—apparently because she'd had two masters. The one I had talked my lungs out about to the DPS, several times. Surprisingly, none of the questioners had really wanted to know how I'd survived falling from a tower block. “Suspect had small parachutes, and I appropriated one” was going to be the one for the files. If I'd had time to appreciate it, instead of, you know, being absolutely scared shitless, the cool factor of, essentially, wind-surfing down the tower holding onto my enemy's back while he was using his totally unknown modified impello would have been a rush like no other.

I should probably suggest it to Disneyland Paris, except that I wouldn't have the slightest way to explain what kind of windsurfing sled I'd been on. I'd been drawing it, though—not a good draftsman, but I could sketch some. I hadn't wanted to think about Skygarden—drawing about it would seem contrary to this—but pen or pencil on white paper rendered it less personal. I had even taken to illustrating it with sound balloons, and at some point it had become an uneasy balance between a graphic novel and art therapy.

I didn't think I'd ever show it to Nightingale.

Which was why, when I returned home after yet another MRI—I was there, wasn't I, and Dr. Walid was never one to waste an idle minute on his machine. I'd asked him once what he _thought_ the long term damage of MRI's would be, and he'd said the evidence wasn't there yet. The bugger deliberately avoided my point. After that I did go to the pub and drink.  


When I returned home, well after dinner, letting myself into the coachhouse, not the main Folly, not yet—maybe I'd sleep here, curled on the couch with the electronic sleeting of the TV falling onto me—I was shocked to see that Nightingale was here and had my drawings out. 

“What the complete fuck are you doing?”

His head jerked up—he hadn't heard the turn of the key in the lock, or my progress across the room—and, handing back the drawings said, “I'm so sorry. I came in here to catch the rugby, and then the dog dragged out your portfolio and started chewing on it.”

He lifted my portfolio case, which wasn't my proper one, a large plastic one, very thin with a zip, but a more modest—okay, it was only an oversize envelope because these didn't rate the good portfolio.

“I was drawing it for a ride I hope to design for Disneyland. I'll add it to the other completely insane adventures which have come my way since accepting employment here—almost falling off a building the first time, driving an ambulance contrary to the Queen's Peace.” (I had gotten used to being mercilessly teased about this, but not by much, and wouldn't have shared this with anyone but him.) “Driving an ambulance while rescuing a victim, falling into a water ride after the ambulance one—half-drowning and hypothermia not included, the sledge-guided fall off a tower block, and finishing with a modified race in the Jag—” his nose wrinkled “—a race set with miniaturized cars steering into each other.”

“Will the flooding of Covent Garden be included?” He stood up and handed me back the drawings. I surveyed for damage, and yes, there was a moist corner with apparent Toby drool. Nightingale drool over my drawings would have created a scenario I wasn't prepared to even imagine.

“No, the water ride part of the adventure will be limited to after the ambulance. We can import actual Thames water—a gallon to a hundred thousand gallons park water, and you could still call it 'with actual Thames water,' you know. Why were you really up here? This isn't a rugby night.” I check, these days, before starting a DVD, to make sure he wouldn't be wandering in, not wanting to ask me to get off my 500th viewing of some Star Trek movie (I refuse to specify. Okay, it's The Voyage Home, but only for Spock and shipmates in 20th century USA, not the whales).

He stood there, looking at the floor, noticing popcorn granules being sniffed out by Toby, and frowning. I let him get on with it, checking all my other personal belongings, wondering whether he'd been up there sniffing them. And what kind of thought was that? I asked myself. Did you want to be sniffing his pants, no doubt lavender scented and mercilessly folded by Molly?

“I came to apologize.”

That was a shock. Teachers never apologize, not from Year One on through University.

I was too busy standing there not letting my jaw drop to hear the next part of what he said.“—my day, pupils sent to Casterbrook were expected to start Latin in the first year, and Greek in the fourth. There was no praise for it, because we all knew that learning them was the basis for learning formae. It was a foundation, like maths, history—”

“The Boer war,” I murmured to myself, partially because I was still in shock from his apology, still thinking about the millions of Africans who had no claim on their country because it hadn't been properly discovered until a few hundred years earlier.

“Yes, the Boer wars, both of them. Are you ill?”

“No, sir. I'm just—no teacher has ever apologized for anything, ever, and I wasn't expecting you to. I had to leave suddenly, I'm sorry, but I had to leave, and it's me who should be apologizing. You are, after all, my master.” I used the term quite deliberately, wanting to see how he looked when I said it.

Now he shivered. “Do you know how much you've changed—how much you've forced me to see—starting with that term—that I never thought about? From the first day you came here?”

“Like language about black magicians?”

“That, and your continued attempts to have me redefine what I think of—thought of—as human, from the jazz vampires to the Quiet People—the different type of fae, how we should interact with the Rivers—”

“Which is not unrelated to the language used to mark others as different. As, for example, you hardly ever hear anyone say nancy or pouf anymore.”

He was a step closer. “No. You don't.” 

I eyed him carefully. I hadn't meant to send that particular signal, had I? Or just not yet?

He stopped moving, now unsure, I could tell. “You know...today started out badly when I failed to understand you—your history, your world, and I would rather it didn't end the same way.”

I closed my eyes for a moment so I wouldn't have to look at him. He'd actually apologized in an appropriate way, not condescending or making excuses. It left me off balance again. He was talking to me as an equal, well, not an equal, exactly, but man to man. It momentarily canceled out our differences. I had asked to learn his magic and if I were honest, i was quite jealous of how much he could do that I couldn't, starting with the damn Latin. 

He hadn't moved away, but was still quite close, enough so that I could smell those lavender scented clothes. I opened my eyes, and looked into his. They were hopeful but cautious. The pulse in his neck was strong. I could ignore it.I could look away, laugh, say something about rugby, my Disneyland plans, the damn weather, anything but look at the blood throbbing in the space where neck met clavicle, where I wanted to kiss his pale skin. Kiss him, put my hands on him, twist open the buttons of his waistcoat, his shirt, slide my hands under the shirt. 

I was still making my mind up. My superior officer. My mentor. My housemate. The extremely handsome 113 year old man standing a bit too near me. The only other person in the world who could understand the betrayal I'd just had. I'm not saying that I reached out to Nightingale with completely clear thoughts—when are thoughts about sex completely clear—but by the time my hand cupped the back of his head I was sure where this was going. I pulled him up and kissed him, running my fingers down his back with my other hand, and meeting firm muscles under his skin. He murmured something and kissed me back,. I pulled him closer and began to slip his shirt up. He d6ropped his mouth to kiss along my jaw to my ear. It got too complicated for thinking very soon after that.

*****

“Didn't exactly think my first time with you would be in the coach house,” I said some time later, when speech had returned. 

“Non ita arbitrentur aut, ” he murmured, but with a distinct laugh in his voice.

“Not in bed! Not bloody Latin in bed!”

“If you wish to avoid Latin in bed, you should study it more in the daytime. It means—”

“I know what it means, 'I did not think so either.' ” Then I carefully studied him. At some point I'd reached for the quilt which lay across the back of the couch and draped it over us. He still looked cold. I pulled it more over his shoulder. “That supposes that there will be more—in bed.”

“Maybe I could send some verses your way than might encourage you to practice your Latin,” he said, “and then you could practice saying them.”

Which was not going to happen. I might have sex—okay, had just _had_ sex with Nightingale, but I wasn't going to coo Latin at him. I said so. He feigned hurt. Then he quoted what he later told me was Ovid. Much, much later I discovered why he'd started with Ovid instead of Catullus, who was quite vile at times. Somewhere during the proceedings, talking while lying next to him, feeling his skin next to me, his hands stroking me slowly—and the next time this happened it was going to be on a larger and firmer location—I found interest mounting again.

*****

“We're never getting up in the morning if this keeps up.”

“Non, non, absolute esse lectiones.” It was sad that I could understand him completely, while distracted by sex, “No, no, absolutely there will be lessons,” so I did something to shut him up—I tickled him in a completely unfair place.

“Iniqua!”  


“I'll 'unfair' you if you don't stop talking Latin.”  


“Pax.”  


Then we set about making each other's world better again, one kiss at a time—unum osculum ad tempus.

**Author's Note:**

> *If you didn't get a lot of Latin, the language, or the poetry, with your education (I didn't), you can start with translations of Ovid for love poetry, or you could try Catullus if you want sometimes very angry smut. Catullus 16 is still shocking today.


End file.
